How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Battlefront.com]

Article about the long term damage being done to Russia's economy, in particular worker shortages resulting from direct and indirect impact of the war.  Nothing we haven't talked about 1000 times already, but still good stuff.  I liked this quote:

Quote

Goldman Sachs describes it as the “most binding constraint on the Russian economy”, even ahead of sanctions-related restrictions on capital or technology. With more than two vacancies for every Russian worker, the jobs market is twice as tight as in the UK, where wages have taken off.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/russia-shrinking-workforce-wrecking-economy-050000151.html

Steve

[womble]

1 hour ago, Maciej Zwolinski said:

It is a much bigger missile (about twice the dimensions of a Stinger, which has to fit a man's shoulder), it is not being shot from the ground upwards but from the air downwards, and it has a much easier time targeting a tank, than an AA missile would have targeting a helicopter. It must have been a much easier thing to design than an AA missile of similar range. 

I never said MANPAD. I said "Mobile".

Over 10km, the treetop height from which AH are launching is pretty much irrelevant in terms of fuel/flight characteristics.

Stinger was designed originally in 1961. It's sixty years old, even if upgrades have been made. Seekers have improved "quite a lot" since then. It's entirely possible for a visual lock that doesn't need to be maintained so the missile sees the target before launch and can seek it out again, if it breaks visual contact. Missiles are a lot faster than choppers. Maybe it has to be a salvo of three to cope with lateral ducking, or maybe the missile just has to climb high enough to have a decent field of view behind whatever defilade the chopper is using. Conceptually, it's a piece of the proverbial, and well within current, even recent image processing.

The asset probably needs to be vehicle mounted, just to pack a large enough motor, but Startstreak can fight gravity one-on-one for 10000m of climb; even a modicum of aerodynamic lift should be able to let that same engine drive a payload ten clicks horizontally.

There's no certainty that even a full-on NATO effort could achieve total air superiority vs the latest Russian AD complexes; they've better SEAD than the Russians, but I don't think anyone was expecting Ukraine's Soviet-era AD to be able to deny even the Russians the freedom of the air, and it did, largely unsupported by Western systems. So even if ground-based AD is "second best", it may well be all that's available.

[kimbosbread]

14 minutes ago, womble said:

I never said MANPAD. I said "Mobile".

Over 10km, the treetop height from which AH are launching is pretty much irrelevant in terms of fuel/flight characteristics.

What’s needed is an autonomous loitering anti-air munition. That solves the helicopter pop-up issue from the perspective of the manpad-wallah on the ground.

EDIT: Or you have a drone designed to detect helicopters from above, and then have a ground-based missile that can be requested, but that might be a much more complex system.

Edited July 3, 2023 by kimbosbread

[Battlefront.com]

We've talked about it before, but what is really needed is a hybrid FPV kamikaze drone and guided missile.  Fire it into the air when you know a helicopter is in the area, it then flies around at a low speed looking for a target.  After it identifies it speeds up so that it can strike before the target can evade.

Terrain masking can't protect against something like this because it can simply climb to an altitude necessary to see over terrain features that block LOS from the ground.

I am sure someone is working on something like this.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

2 minutes ago, kimbosbread said:

What’s needed is an autonomous loitering anti-air munition. That solves the helicopter pop-up issue from the perspective of the manpad-wallah on the ground.

EDIT: Or you have a drone designed to detect helicopters from above, and then have a ground-based missile that can be requested, but that might be a much more complex system.

Damn!  You Ninja'd me

The key thing is that you don't need the massive ground based systems to make this work.  You can launch this from a light truck or possibly even an ATV.  I don't think that is practical for a standard missile system.

Steve

[kimbosbread]

1 minute ago, Battlefront.com said:

Damn!  You Ninja'd me

The key thing is that you don't need the massive ground based systems to make this work.  You can launch this from a light truck or possibly even an ATV.  I don't think that is practical for a standard missile system.

Steve

Two more things:

• Consumeable, so you save weight and dont need a complicated recovery and maintenance system
• Optical or thermal targeting, so you don’t need a radar or some other active system that emits across the spectrum and can easily be detected
• Autonomous is best, so you don’t leak the presence of the system at all- and it means you don’t need a transmitter on the vehicle, or a big antenna on the drone.

[womble]

Somebody put a video of an octocopter-type drone firing a missile up "a thousand pages" ago... It was a prototype, but prototype to service seems to be fairly quick in Ukrainian hands... A drone firing an existing MANPAD system sounds like a combination of systems that could fit the bill if conditions on the battlefield allow the drone to loiter ahead of the AH's target.

There have been plenty of air-to-ground missiles fired by Predators and other "heavy fixed-wing" drones, over the years; would such a class of things make suitable forward platforms for air-to-near-ground missiles with passive seeker heads?

Edited July 3, 2023 by womble

[kevinkin]

The tail rotor is the the Achilles heal for choppers. However Kh-52 uses counter rotating main rotors to replace the tail. 
If you can unsynchronized the two main rotors the chopper is unflyable for combat. Even a minor hit could become successful. The switch blade is 6000 USD a piece. I wonder if they could be used vs attack choppers in the short term. You would want to add some additional sensors other than the camera. But wonder if the idea has hit the proving ground? 

The larger Switchblade 600 is effective against armored targets and can fly for more than 40 minutes, but weighs 50 pounds, according to the manufacturer.

[Splinty]

48 minutes ago, womble said:

I never said MANPAD. I said "Mobile".

Over 10km, the treetop height from which AH are launching is pretty much irrelevant in terms of fuel/flight characteristics.

Stinger was designed originally in 1961. It's sixty years old, even if upgrades have been made. Seekers have improved "quite a lot" since then. It's entirely possible for a visual lock that doesn't need to be maintained so the missile sees the target before launch and can seek it out again, if it breaks visual contact. Missiles are a lot faster than choppers. Maybe it has to be a salvo of three to cope with lateral ducking, or maybe the missile just has to climb high enough to have a decent field of view behind whatever defilade the chopper is using. Conceptually, it's a piece of the proverbial, and well within current, even recent image processing.

The asset probably needs to be vehicle mounted, just to pack a large enough motor, but Startstreak can fight gravity one-on-one for 10000m of climb; even a modicum of aerodynamic lift should be able to let that same engine drive a payload ten clicks horizontally.

There's no certainty that even a full-on NATO effort could achieve total air superiority vs the latest Russian AD complexes; they've better SEAD than the Russians, but I don't think anyone was expecting Ukraine's Soviet-era AD to be able to deny even the Russians the freedom of the air, and it did, largely unsupported by Western systems. So even if ground-based AD is "second best", it may well be all that's available.

The Redeye, Stingers predecessor was developed in 1961. The Stinger didn't enter service until the early '80s.

[Battlefront.com]

5 minutes ago, womble said:

Somebody put a video of an octocopter-type drone firing a missile up "a thousand pages" ago... It was a prototype, but prototype to service seems to be fairly quick in Ukrainian hands... A drone firing an existing MANPAD system sounds like a combination of systems that could fit the bill if conditions on the battlefield allow the drone to loiter ahead of the AH's target.

There have been plenty of air-to-ground missiles fired by Predators and other "heavy fixed-wing" drones, over the years; would such a class of things make suitable forward platforms for air-to-near-ground missiles with passive seeker heads?

In theory this is how you can extend the range of a MANPAD.  You can fly the drone to the edge of its range and launch the missile from there.  The problem is commercial drones + MANPAD still doesn't get you to 10km.  What it does do is fix the problem of terrain masking.  Theoretically.

The big problem with such drones is that you will need some other form of detection to know when to put one in the air and where to send it.  Without that you're just looking for a needle in a haystack and that's not a good way to go.

Steve

[DesertFox]

It happened. 2A4 CAN upgraded with ERA

 

 

 

 

Edited July 3, 2023 by DesertFox

[Carolus]

This twitter thread claims that Russia has significantly scaled up its equipment production.

Time for Ukrainian doom-posting for once.

With Western populations unwilling to spend an extra penny on the war (most equipment and support is coming out of existing budgets), is the West allowing the most important event of thus century so far to slip out of its grasp through laziness and complacency? Did Russia win a few years ago by destabilizing us from the inside too much?

Not actually what I believe. Just wondering about possiblities.

 

 

Edited July 3, 2023 by Carolus
typos

[Letter from Prague]

Given the trickle of equipment perfectly timed to give Russians time to dig in, and lack of airpower to break the defenses, I think the West is actually aiming for a stalemate - the politicians are just pretending to do useful stuff because the people generally want to support Ukraine - but not enough to be effective.

We will see if West dost something once Russia does nuclear terrorism. It is pretty inevitable they will, and I'm sure politicians are already preparing speeches about how "we must investigate" and "let's not be hasty" so that it can disappear into nothingness.

The zero Western reaction to Russian terrorism with the dam is basically a green light for Russia to continue and do what they want.

That is my pessimistic take, anyway.

[BamaMatt]

23 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

In theory this is how you can extend the range of a MANPAD.  You can fly the drone to the edge of its range and launch the missile from there.  The problem is commercial drones + MANPAD still doesn't get you to 10km.  What it does do is fix the problem of terrain masking.  Theoretically.

The big problem with such drones is that you will need some other form of detection to know when to put one in the air and where to send it.  Without that you're just looking for a needle in a haystack and that's not a good way to go.

Steve

Why not the Switchblade 600. I bet it can lock on to a helicopter as easily as a tank.

[photon]

Question asked out of total ignorance - since the helicopters seem to be flying very very low, what would rapidly retargeted 155mm airbursts do to them? Would they be able to range to 10km past the line of contact? Would good coordination with a Caesar or PzH2k battery deny helicopters the relevant airspace?

[Maciej Zwolinski]

1 hour ago, womble said:

I never said MANPAD. I said "Mobile".

I know, but  in practice it is the same thing as regards the missile. The available Western mobile systems are based on MANPADS put on some chassis with a set of thermals slapped on them. 

 

1 hour ago, womble said:

Over 10km, the treetop height from which AH are launching is pretty much irrelevant in terms of fuel/flight characteristics.

But the mobile SAM missile is not going to be developed specifically for attack at treetop height. It has to be designed with a view to reaching higher up and cannot be optimised just for range.

[womble]

24 minutes ago, Splinty said:

The Redeye, Stingers predecessor was developed in 1961. The Stinger didn't enter service until the early '80s.

Shame on me for taking headline dates. Sorry.

So Stinger is "only" 40 (Forty; four-zero) years old. I think the assertion that seekers have improved still stands...

1 minute ago, BamaMatt said:

Why not the Switchblade 600. I bet it can lock on to a helicopter as easily as a tank.

Maybe so. Would the helo be able to evade it, or even threat-detect it? I think maybe the problem might be that the helo won't sit still long enough for the Switchblade to complete its attack run (even if it's entirely unaware of the presence of loitering munitions), unless the Switchblade gets very lucky, or can arrange some sort of trap/surprise. Certainly you'd have to have put the Switchblade up and out well before the helo showed its face. The density of the picket line of loiterers you'd have to establish would likely be prohibitive, especially if no AH came to the party. They could be used on other targets of opportunity (like they're designed, after all), but they amn't comin' home...

[sburke]

26 minutes ago, Carolus said:

This twitter thread claims that Russia has significantly scaled up its equipment production.

Time for Ukrainian doom-posting for once.

With Western populations unwilling to spend an extra penny on the war (most equipment and support is coming out of existing budgets), is the West allowing the most important event of thus century so far to slip out of its grasp through laziness and complacency? Did Russia win a few years ago by destabilizing us from the inside too much?

Not actually what I believe. Just wondering about possiblities.

 

 

I’m  sorry, what exactly are we basing this claim on? What are production rates? What actual technology standards are included? Considering they are fielding t 54s not so sure any of this is valid. 

[Maciej Zwolinski]

39 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

In theory this is how you can extend the range of a MANPAD.  You can fly the drone to the edge of its range and launch the missile from there.  The problem is commercial drones + MANPAD still doesn't get you to 10km.  What it does do is fix the problem of terrain masking.  Theoretically.

Yes, but the tanks can hang back a few kms behind the drones.  WIkipedia quotes the range of air to air Stinger as 8 km. Put it forward 2 km before the tanks and you can engage the Kamovs.

 

42 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

The big problem with such drones is that you will need some other form of detection to know when to put one in the air and where to send it.  Without that you're just looking for a needle in a haystack and that's not a good way to go.

In the case where you want to defend the attacking mechanised force, you know where to send them - in front of the tanks and IFVs. Like with submarines - it is very inefficient to try and hunt them in the ocean, but when you set up a convoy they come to you in droves.

[kimbosbread]

4 minutes ago, sburke said:

I’m  sorry, what exactly are we basing this claim on? What are production rates? What actual technology standards are included? Considering they are fielding t 54s not so sure any of this is valid. 

Yeah I’m dubious. Not to mention lack of trained crews.

[womble]

1 minute ago, Maciej Zwolinski said:

I know, but  in practice it is the same thing as regards the missile. The available Western mobile systems are based on MANPADS put on some chassis with a set of thermals slapped on them. 

Nonsense (the bolded bit). Because the available western mobile systems are not candidates for this job, since they aren't capable of prosecuting an attack on an aircraft at tree-top level at A-t-G-ATGM engagement ranges. So we're not even considering "available Western systems". So that paragraph is a circular argument against a point that's not being made.

4 minutes ago, Maciej Zwolinski said:

But the mobile SAM missile is not going to be developed specifically for attack at treetop height. It has to be designed with a view to reaching higher up and cannot be optimised just for range.

Who said it has to be optimised "just for range"? If it can reach out to 10km at treetop height (and it'll probably have to climb a few hundred metre for visibility anyway), it can probably reach as high as an Igla or a Stinger, even if it has to leave the really high stuff to Starstreak. And since it's probably going to be vehicle-mounted, it can be larger than any of those (though keeping it trim will help with ammo count, obviously), so maybe it can do both anyway.

[kimbosbread]

2 minutes ago, womble said:

Who said it has to be optimised "just for range"? If it can reach out to 10km at treetop height (and it'll probably have to climb a few hundred metre for visibility anyway), it can probably reach as high as an Igla or a Stinger, even if it has to leave the really high stuff to Starstreak. And since it's probably going to be vehicle-mounted, it can be larger than any of those (though keeping it trim will help with ammo count, obviously), so maybe it can do both anyway.

Yeah, but the problem is detection and engagement speed if it’s a ground platform. First, how noisy do you want to be? Can thermal/optics catch a treetop target at 10km? Second, at 10km you’ll have a very brief window to fire your missile, and likely the enemy chopper has fired one too, so you are losing some vehicles in any case. The narrow window makes it seem to me like chance of success is not that high. Even if your missile is going mach 5, you are looking at 6 seconds once youy’ve detected the helicopter and your missile has launched.

[Maciej Zwolinski]

5 minutes ago, womble said:

Nonsense (the bolded bit). Because the available western mobile systems are not candidates for this job, since they aren't capable of prosecuting an attack on an aircraft at tree-top level at A-t-G-ATGM engagement ranges. So we're not even considering "available Western systems". So that paragraph is a circular argument against a point that's not being made.

I was answering your original question why Vikhr was developed with 10 km range, and Western systems were not developed with 10 km range - as I wrote, among other reasons, because the Western systems were developed on the basis of MANPADS which has smaller and less capable missiles .

I don't know what your point is, but I know what your question was. If you cannot express your point in your question, then it is unlikely to be answered but that is not my problem. 

[dan/california]

Couldn't NATO put some sort of surveillance aircraft over theBlack sea that would be able to spot helicopters and send the data around? I quite like the idea of theRussian choppers being spotted from one side, and hit by long range SAMs from the other.

Edited July 3, 2023 by dan/california

[dan/california]

So much of the helicopter problem is Ukraine not having any airborne radar to speak. of. Even a couple of F-35s flying CAP fifty miles back and at 40,000 feet could probably find helicopters easily, and either fire an AMRAAM with a supersonic boost, or cue some other system. I am leaning ever more into the idea of just burning the long range strike assets to kill them on the ground.